


Ships in the Arctic

by navree



Category: Pundit & Broadcast Journalist RPF (US), Real News RPF
Genre: Consensual Infidelity, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:39:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navree/pseuds/navree
Summary: He hasn't said it but he's thought it.Things are said. Little things, big things. Things aren't said. Little things, big things.





	Ships in the Arctic

**Author's Note:**

> I genuinely don't know what this is but it's here and it's happened  
> as always, comments (either positive or constructive) are always welcome and much appreciated!

Finding out that Liz knows is really something. In his memories, Jim equates it to being kicked in the chest by a bronco, or perhaps getting shocked with a defibrillator. It is also, quite possibly, one of the weirdest post coital conversations he's ever had. 

He feels a bit sleepy after, because he's pushing fifty. Liz is not but she indulges him. He also tries to make any sex as physically satisfying as possible so that he doesn't pass out and leave her wound up with no way to relieve the tension.   
Because he's just a nice guy like that. 

They have the blankets pulled around them, given how high she likes the air conditioning. Jim's not sure if she's asleep. Her eyes are closed but there's a shift in awake breathing and sleep breathing that he just hasn't heard yet. He's scrolling through Twitter when she hums, shifts, flutters her eyes open, turns to look at him. And then she says it. 

"So, and I want an honest answer here, was Michelle Wolff right?" 

Jim blinks at her, puts his phone on his nightstand. "Hm?" Liz ruffles a hand through her hair. 

"About how Jake Tapper looks when he comes. Was she right?" He simultaneously sucks in a gasp and exhales like he's been punched, and the resulting effect is that he chokes on air for a second. He coughs, hard and violent, sucking in a lungful of air. Liz looks unconcerned that she almost caused respiratory failure. 

"What are you-" She raises an eyebrow and he falls silent. "How do you-" 

"It's not hard to put two and two together." 

This isn't happening. This cannot be happening. He wants to know what putting two and two together was, what tipped her off on that, who tipped her off if someone did. Jim tries very hard not to hyperventilate, and remind himself that Liz isn't the type of person to go about a break up like this. If that's what she wants. 

"Elizabeth." She looks at him, neutral. His mind blanks. What do people say in situations like this? I love you? It would be the worst possible time for him to say it for the first time, so no. "It's not." It is.

"It is." How Liz doesn't look more put out at a cheating boyfriend is beyond him. "And it's OK."

Just when you think it's impossible to be more surprised by this conversation. 

"It is?" Jim is skeptical, to say the least. No one in their right mind would look at this story and think it's "OK". Guy falls in love while married to another married man, guy gets divorced and starts up an affair with said married man, things go briefly awry, divorced guy ends up dating a girl half his age, the two men start back up again, girlfriend is apparently aware of it. 

Liz sighs. "...No." It's a heavy sound. "I mean, not really, but it is." 

"Elizabeth, that doesn't make any sense." 

"I feel the need to point out that none of this makes sense." She's right. There's a lapse of silence, and Liz shifts, props herself up on her elbow. "Fact is, if I have to choose between sharing you or losing you..." She glances down, almost self conscious, doodles her finger absently on the mattress. "Well, sharing is caring."

They don't do this, he and Liz. Mostly him. He's not the best at communication. And she's not the type who wants to have longwinded talks about feelings and emotions and whatnot. Or at least, not with him, with whatever this is. 

**_(_** _you're dating, you idiot, and now you've gone ahead and wrecked her life_ **_)_**

It means something, Liz telling him this. Opening up, being emotionally honest. It does, it has to. They don't say anything for the rest of the night, but she holds him. It's good enough.

 

 

 

"Liz knows." There's a spluttering noise on the other line. Jake must be drinking something, it sounds like he's inhaled half of it up his nose. 

"When did that happen?" 

"Hell if I know." Fuck it's hot. That his AC is broken is proof God is dead. Among other things. "I think somebody blabbed." 

"Who would have blabbed?" Now Jake sounds legitimately concerned, and not just surprised. Because if someone can tell on them to Liz, they can tell Mediaite or Fox News or Breitbart or something as stupid. And Jake's still married. So what if Jen knows too, no one'll care about that if this comes out. 

"Rahmeen? Matt?" Unfair to implicate their producers, sure, but they've been around each other enough that if anyone would catch on, it would be them. Maybe that's mean, but it's true. 

"I don't think so." Jim keeps silent. Jake, like always fills it. Like he's anxious. "So are you two going to -"

"Are you and Jen?" Maybe if Jake didn't sound so fucking eager, so desperate for that outcome, he might have gotten to finish his sentence. But remember, Jim tried his hand at being single with Jake in his life. Jake stayed married. 

He needs to be reminded that he doesn't really have the right to complain about Liz. 

"You doing The Lead tomorrow?" A sigh, from Jim. He's asked this a lot. Not just by Jake, by others. Is he gonna do The Lead? Come back to that time slot? And if not, why not? Why not, Jim? 

"We'll see." That's his answer every time. It's gentler than an outright no. He might be an ass, but he still tries to be at least a little bit kind. People who lead married men astray and cheat on their wives and girlfriends can't really afford to be total dicks, now can they? 

 

 

  
   
A preface: none of this is Liz's fault. Nothing of anything is Liz's fault. Most people would agree, but it still feels like it should be said. Not when things with Sharon fell apart **_(_** that was something else entirely, and no one's fault but his own  ** _)_**. Not even when things with Jake. 

When things with Jake. Well, things with Jake had been a long time making. Ever since the first time he went on the show and heard Jake call him Mr. Acosta even though he's pretty sure the script had him down as Jim. Things with Jake happened, and kept on happening.

 

 

 

There's a system to this, now that he's in a relationship again, and Jake's still married to Jen. Because Jake, according to all the evidence, should want things to work with Jen. And Jim knows that he wants things to work with Liz. 

For a variety of reasons, he and Liz aren't public, but they hang out. They get dinner sometimes, and they spend a lot of time at each other's apartments. These are the good days. 

And then there are the bad days. Where his skin feels prickly, too hot, and he feels something clawing at his throat, choking him. The bad days make him want to drown himself in a bottle of, well, of something strong. 

But he doesn't let them drown him. Because Jim has a life raft to save him.

The life raft is named Jake Tapper. Which feels pathetic, but it's true. He mostly sees Jake on what he considers bad days. Maybe the entire day was terrible. Maybe just one awful thing happens. But if the day's bad, he finds his way to Jake. Like wandering, in the dark, groping along a wall until he can find a light switch. 

Jake makes the bad days less bad. And Jake doesn't care if Jim doesn't put on a front a hundred percent of the kind. He still does, but to a lesser degree. After all, Jake's seen him at his worse. Jake's seen him at Trump rallies. After Cuba. When Trump got elected. Those months when he lost his wife and then his kids in one fell swoop. Jake's seen him beaten down, seen him broken. 

For God's sake, Jake's seen him cry. 

So Jim doesn't have to try as hard with him. And that, that alone, can make the unbearable days bearable. 

 

 

  
   
Liz has seen him on a bad day exactly once. And it is a _bad_ day.

It's a busy news day, and he's filling in for Wolf. And he's already a bit distracted, because for some reason the barrage of less than friendly mail he gets had included one very interesting letter threatening to get his father deported. 

They never get anything done, those particular crazies, but it always sends him into a mild panic. He remembers his father, in 2009, when he went for the first time, taking one of Jim's hands in both of his own. "They might put you in prison." 

His dad came here legally. Legally, they can't just ship him back for no reason, just because they don't like what Jim says when he does his job. 

_Yes they can_ , a small voice in the back of his head remarks snidely. They can do anything they want now, don't you remember? They can feed your father back to the monsters that would tear him apart and spit him back out on the streets. Demons helping demons. 

It doesn't put him in a good frame of mind, but he's sure he can shrug it off. He shrugs it off stuff like this all the time. 

Except they're talking about the separated children at the border. And they're awful stories, it's awful to hear the cries of the kids and the pleas of their parents. It would make anyone with a heart feel sick.

Jim thinks he might throw up live on air. He thinks of his father. He thinks of his children. He thinks of everything that's gone wrong for the past couple years. He's scared for his family, for himself. He's heartbroken for everyone else. He feels strangled.

Yeah, it's a _bad day_. 

It's the first and hopefully only time Liz ever sees him cry, and he honestly hasn't cried like that in more than a year. Jim doesn't like it, and he doesn't like having Liz as a witness. After that, he makes himself promise never to do that in front of her again. Because that's not what they do.

 

 

 

Finding out Liz knew is not the first time Jim's thought about telling Liz he loves her. Not by a long shot.

He hasn't said it but he's thought it. 

He hasn't said it to Jake either, but he's thought it for him too. 

 

 

 

Guess what? It's a bad day. 

The White House treats him like trash, no surprise there. Fox News tries tear him to pieces, no surprise there. There's some generic threat mail to go along with the very nice bottle of bourbon he got from a fan, no surprise there. He's gonna have to table any plans to see his kids this weekend because he's going to Mar-A-Lago, no surprise there. 

It's all natural, normal even though it shouldn't be, but he hasn't gotten a lot of sleep, and the bits he did weren't peaceful, and he feels raw and unmade. So all of these regularities have been chipping away at him since he resigned himself to being awake at 4:30 this morning. It's like an ice pick, chiseling apart pieces of his heart minute by minute. 

He's tired. Sometimes he really thinks he's had enough. That he's reached his limit. Does he want to? 

These are the thoughts that plague him as he heads over to Liz's. He wonders if he can filter them all out of his system by the time he knocks on her door. Hopefully. 

He follows her to her kitchen where she's apparently making some kind of shrimp scampi pasta thing. There's a glass of whiskey by the pan. Thank God. Jim's reaching for it when she smacks his hand away. 

"That's for the shrimp." 

"You cook your shrimp in whiskey?" It's an interesting technique. Maybe it's good, who knows, he's never tried it. Liz nods, leans against her counter, stares at him contemplative. He stares back at her. 

They haven't really had an in depth conversation since she told him that she knew about Jake. It's not their thing, for one, and for another they have busy lives. And nothing's changed. She's yet to demand he never speak to her again. By all counts, that's a good thing. But the way she's examining him makes him wonder if they're finally going to have some big talk about it.

"Fuck." Liz sounds frustrated. Never a good sign. 

"Everything OK?" 

"I just remembered something." This isn't going in the direction Jim thought it was going to go. "When I was at your apartment this weekend, I left a hair scrunchie there." He knows he looks very confused right now, most likely because he is. There's no reason why a hair scrunchie should be the foremost thing on her mind right now. 

"All right." He folds his hands, shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over a chair. He's not gonna add messy to his list of flaws. 

"Listen, I'm cooking, so do you mind going over there and trying to find it?" She looks actually contrite, like this might be some kind of imposition on him. It's really not, but it also makes no sense. "Please, pretty please, I'll make it up to you." 

"Liz, what -" And now Liz has her hands on his chest and is all but shoving him out the door, and pressing something into his hand.

"Just in case you spend an extra long time looking." He glances down. 

"This is a key." Jim's out the door now. There's a brief moment, where she looks at him, and he looks at her. She nods, briefly, and then shuts her door in his face. He's still standing there, blinking. She gave him a key. She told him she knew about him and Jake, that she was OK with it and not OK with it at the same time, they don't talk about it, and she gives him a key to her apartment. 

What is happening? What is happening to them? To him, to her, to-

She didn't lose a hairband at his place. Maybe the right wingers at Fox are right. Maybe he really is an idiot. 

 

 

 

Jake calls him while he's walking back. He needs the walk. To clear his head, to breathe. 

"Listen, I know you're with her but -" 

"Walking back to my place, actually." He can almost feel how badly Jake wants him to elaborate. He won't. "You wanna get a drink?" 

"At a bar?" Jim's still addled, he shakes his head before remembering he can't be seen. 

"My place." Where he's supposed to be looking for a hair scrunchie that doesn't exist. 

 

 

 

This is not the first time he's come upon his apartment to find Jake already waiting there. It's actually the third time. For an independent, married man, Jake seems to always be at his beck and call. If he was a bad person, a really bad person, Jim could try to see how far he could push it. How much he could ask and how much Jake would acquiesce to with nary a second thought. 

Sometimes he thinks that there's no limit to that.

Most times he remembers that there is a limit and it almost killed him to reach it.  

"Did you _sprint_ here?" Jake's sitting on his steps, in jeans and a dumbass Eagles sweater. He shakes his head, pushes himself to his feet with a slight noise in the back of his throat. 

"I drove." He gestures back to his car, parked on the curb. "I don't think I live within reasonable walking distance of you." 

"Is this a theory you've tested?" Jake shrugs. Jim can't help it, he smiles. There's something calming, warm, cathartic about being with Jake, about being in his presence. There's something good about spending time with someone who loves him this much, so completely. Sue him, it's a good feeling, and he likes it. And Jim has a poor track record of not acting on feelings he likes. 

He's here now, isn't he? 

"So, do you just have as many drinks here that a bar has, or..." Jim fishes his keys out of his pocket, passes Jake on his way to his door. 

"I've got exactly one drink to offer you," he says, twisting the key in the lock. "Some very nice fan sent me bourbon that I've yet to try. But it's a nice color and the bottle looked expensive and I don't recognize the name, so I'm assuming it's delicious and has high alcohol content." 

"And _we're_ sharing it?" Jake follows him into his apartment, gives it the same once over he always gives it as Jim flicks on the lights. Yes, he gets it, his home's emptier than Jake's because he doesn't have his kids living with him, or two demon dogs. "I'm flattered." 

"If that's the way you want to feel about it." 

It's nice bourbon, smooth. And it's not a bad thing, to have a drinking partner. To have Jake as a drinking partner. There's some chitchat, about work and life and the kids, nothing too serious and intense, easy silence in between. Jim's leaning against his counter, Jake against the wall. 

"I didn't tell her." The ice clinks in the glass when Jim gives him a look. 

"I never asked you if you did." 

"You were thinking it." Jim lets his eyebrows dance up for a moment. Maybe. He's never taken the time to think long and hard. But there probably was a part of him that wondered if Jake had told Liz. He told Jen. He's incapable of keeping his mouth shut. 

"Well." Jim drains the last of the bourbon in his glass, pours himself another. How many is that now? "Thanks for letting me know." Jake's giving him that look again. If he went through the rest of his life and never saw that look again, it'd be too soon. 

"Thanks for inviting me to get a drink." He's trying, with is commendable. Jake has an expectation about what's going to happen tonight. He's attempting a semblance at being gentlemanly about it, but. 

It doesn't really work. Jim downs his drink in one smooth move. 

"I've got an early day tomorrow," Jake tells him. Jim nods. "Probably shouldn't stay here any longer, just to be safe." Jim nods again, can't help but have his lips quirk up a little. "Really, I should just finish this and go." Jim nods again. Jake sets his glass down. 

Kissing Jake is. Kissing Jake is an experience he's very sure he won't be able to get anywhere else. Jim's got him crowded against a wall, has his hands in his hair **_(_** Jake never has any clue what to do with his hands, it's almost endearing **_)_** , a leg between his thighs.

Jake is smart. He has a good memory. He remembers the way to Jim's bedroom. 

 

 

 

It's dark and quiet when he gets back to Liz's place. Jake had left his brownstone, and honestly Jim could have just cleaned the sheets and gone to bed at his own home. 

He doesn't want to. 

He puts his key in his pocket, feels strangely possessive of it now that he has it, and heads to the bedroom. Liz is sleeping, a hand under her chin, looking gorgeous and very peaceful. 

Not to make everything about himself, but Jim can't remember the last he ever felt peaceful.

But he is exhausted and he's ready to fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, except that Liz stirs, shifts beside him, mumbles out a "Hey", voice scratchy with sleep. Jim presses a quick kiss to her hair, almost in spite of himself. Like a muscle memory, something he can't help and can't shake. 

"Sorry if I woke you." 

"Ah, it's fine, I had planned on staying up anyway." The mercy of her white lies makes him want to cry. Instead, he tucks himself closer, puts a hand on her shoulder, just to feel the contact of her skin on his. 

_I love you_ , he says. But it comes out as, "Couldn't find your hairband." _I'm sorry_ , he says. But it comes out as, "That OK?" Jim expects a pause, a silence, some throw away line, or maybe her even pretending to have fallen back asleep and ignoring him.

"It's fine," she says. He hears the _I love you too_ very clearly. And there's an _I love you_ when she turns, brushes a hand against his cheek. Curls against his chest, her blond hair tickling his chin. Jim passes a hand through it, lets himself drift off, thinking of how different Jake and Liz taste when he kisses them. He can't decide which one he prefers. 

Maybe he will, one day. One day Jim will make a choice, develop a spine. Something. He'll tell Jake to take a hike. He'll admit to Liz that he loves her. He'll hold Jake's hand in public. Someday, maybe. Or maybe never, and everything'll stay the same, while his half-baked thoughts remain in that wet, slippery alternate universe of what might have been. 


End file.
